Windows Phone 7: The Ars Review

The smartphone market ain't what it used to be. Four years ago, Symbian ruled the world—it was totally dominant in every market but three: Japan and China both had strong showings from Linux, and the North American market was split roughly evenly between RIM, Microsoft, and PalmSource. Worldwide, smartphone sales amounted to some 60 to 65 million.

Then Apple came along with the iPhone in 2007 and changed the world.

The iPhone did four things. It showed us what could be done with finger-based user interfaces—that they could be easy to use, easy to type on, flexible, and good-looking. It made smartphones mass-market, consumer-oriented gadgets, breaking them free of their corporate shackles. It showed that smartphones were viable web browsing platforms, just as long as they were equipped with a good browser. And, eventually, it showed that there was a lot of value to be had in integrating an online application store.

Windows Mobile was a solid performer in the old smartphone world, but it never moved into the new, post-iPhone smartphone world. Windows Mobile 6.5, released in May 2009, was a half-hearted attempt to bring the system up-to-date with a finger-friendly home screen and Start menu-type-thing, but the interface was crudely grafted on and plainly unsatisfactory. This wasn't finger-friendly, consumer-friendly, modern smartphone software, and everyone knew it. It didn't halt Windows Mobile's marketshare slide, much less turn it around.

If Microsoft wanted to remain a player in the smartphone market, something would have to change. Windows Phone 7 is that change.

Windows Phone 7 is a smartphone platform that's aimed first and foremost at consumers. It's designed from the ground up for a finger-driven interface. It's built to be clean, attractive, and consistent. The ambition is that it will finally give Microsoft a platform that will enable it to take on the iPhone and Android phones. Virtually everything that Windows Mobile did is now ancient history. Windows Phone 7 ushers in a new era of Microsoft-powered smartphones.

Hardware

In many ways the hardware is the biggest similarity between Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, because with the new operating system, just as with the old one, Microsoft is leaving the hardware to third parties. Unlike with Windows Mobile, however, the company is being extremely strict about what's allowed and what's not. Every Windows Phone 7 device must meet the minimum specification.

This is a high specification; these are premium handsets, so they'll be priced towards the upper end of the spectrum. When Windows Phone 7 was first announced, Microsoft said that at some point after launch, lower resolution 480×320 devices would also be supported, and even further into the future, an as-yet unspecified third resolution/form-factor would also be added.

At the moment, however, all the focus is on the 800×480 models, and personally, I think Microsoft should stick with this for as long as possible before venturing into new designs. The iPhone has demonstrated that you don't need a billion different models to be successful, and by sticking with one resolution, the job for application developers is made a great deal easier.

Even within these constraints, the initial handset partners—Dell, HTC, Samsung, and LG—have a reasonably broad range of options, with screens ranging from 3.5" to 4.3", 8 or 16GB of storage, and one with an 8MP camera. Dell's phone, the Venue Pro, includes a vertical (potrait) slider keyboard, and next year Sprint will release an HTC device, the 7 Pro, which will include a more conventional horizontal (landscape) slider keyboard. We took a quick look at the launch models last week, and you can see our initial thoughts on the UK and US offerings.

Some models appear also to have forward-facing cameras. Windows Phone 7 doesn't presently support video calling, which is unfortunate for those of us in parts of the world where such things have been a feature of the telephony landscape for many years. If this is indeed the case, it may be an indication that video calling is coming sooner rather than later.

The most unique, Windows Phone 7-specific feature of the hardware is the hardware buttons. Although the user interface is predominantly touch-driven, the specification mandates a set of hardware buttons. The power, volume, and camera buttons are self-explanatory; it's the Start, search, and back buttons that will be the hallmark of Windows Phone 7 devices. These mandatory buttons are perhaps the biggest reason why, to the chagrin of many, devices that otherwise ought to live up to the Windows Phone 7 specification such as the HTC HD2, won't be upgradable, and will be lumbered with Windows Mobile 6.5 for the rest of their lives.

The button placement is also defined by Microsoft. The back, Start, and search buttons must be on the front of the phone and in that order (though they can be mechanical or capacitive, or some combination of the two). The volume rocker switch must be on the top of the left-hand side, the power button on the top of the right-hand side, and the camera button on the bottom of the right-hand side.

The 3.5mm headphone jack must also support three buttons, volume up, volume down, and a third to answer calls/initiate voice dialling.

Notably missing from the feature list is support for CDMA and EVDO. CDMA support will arrive next year; at the moment, Windows Phone 7 handsets are GSM-only.

The specification allows for minor variations, but it doesn't allow for any radical deviations. The result is that the handsets are far more similar than they are different, and unless Microsoft substantially liberalizes the rules, it looks like it will be difficult for OEMs to produce any truly exceptional or unusual devices. This is good for application developers, as they have fewer targets to aim for, and it's arguably good for consumers, as it means that they can buy a Windows Phone 7 phone with confidence—if you know your way around one Windows Phone 7 phone, you know your way around them all.

It may, however, be bad for the OEMs, who may find themselves with little ability to differentiate and distinguish themselves from each other. OEMs are allowed to include custom applications, but their ability to stamp their own branding onto phones will be far weaker than it is with Android and was with Windows Mobile. If Windows Phone 7 is anything short of an enormous success, it's easy to see them giving up on the platform.

The model I have is a Samsung Omnia 7, and I'm using Orange, in the UK. The most striking feature of the Omnia 7 is its screen; it's a frankly beautiful 4" Super AMOLED display, whose vibrancy and viewing angles are quite delightful. The version I have has 8 GB of internal storage, though a 16 GB version should also be available.

281 Reader Comments

Too bad this didn't come out sooner, but I like what I'm seeing. By the time I go to buy a new phone in a year and a half, this might be the phone for me. Who knows what improvements will be there in the future.

The interface looks pretty at first glance, with notifications, but on closer inspection you realize the notifications that it displays are a farce. The Facebook notification is pseudo. It just changes randomly. No 3rd party apps can generate notifications, because they cannot multitask.

The fact that Microsoft produced an Office app that cannot Copy-&-Paste (meaning it cannot move text) should have everyone rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter. It is a complete sham.

Microsoft mandated compulsory hardware features, like compass and camera, but then didn't write the APIs to make them work, so none of the 3rd party apps can access them.

Not even Exchange works properly on Windows Phone 7.

No other company has ever produced an operating system as bad as this. It does nothing well. It is a joke.

The interface looks pretty at first glance, with notifications, but on closer inspection you realize the notifications that it displays are a farce. The Facebook notification is pseudo. It just changes randomly. No 3rd party apps can generate notifications, because they cannot multitask.

The fact that Microsoft produced an Office app that cannot Copy-&-Paste (meaning it cannot move text) should have everyone rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter. It is a complete sham.

Microsoft mandated compulsory hardware features, like compass and camera, but then didn't write the APIs to make them work, so none of the 3rd party apps can access them.

Not even Exchange works properly on Windows Phone 7.

No other company has ever produced an operating system as bad as this. It does nothing well. It is a joke.

Yes, Because you have a review unit in front of you and used it for yourself?

I've been following this with some odd fascination for a while, and am hoping to get one soon-ish. I'm just hoping my horrible luck doesn't kick in here - I liked OS/2, BeOS, the Dreamcast, HD-DVD, etc

I've been following this with some odd fascination for a while, and am hoping to get one soon-ish. I'm just hoping my horrible luck doesn't kick in here - I liked OS/2, BeOS, the Dreamcast, HD-DVD, etc

The interface looks pretty at first glance, with notifications, but on closer inspection you realize the notifications that it displays are a farce. The Facebook notification is pseudo. It just changes randomly. No 3rd party apps can generate notifications, because they cannot multitask.

I have no idea what you're talking about with the Facebook notifications. They're real notifications. Third party apps can generate notifications. They are push notifications generated by the developer's server and sent to Microsoft servers to be sent to the phone. If you're talking about local toasts, I suppose you can't, but third party applications can absolutely generate push notifications and can even change the application tile on the start screen.

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The fact that Microsoft produced an Office app that cannot Copy-&-Paste (meaning it cannot move text) should have everyone rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter. It is a complete sham.

It is regretable that the OS is launching with Office and no copy and paste functionality. That breaks some pretty good scenarios that should be supported. Thankfully, Microsoft has said that this will be added early next year. It's hard to argue that this is a deal-breaker for the platform when it's coming so soon. The problem with iPhone copy and paste is that no one knew if the iPhone ever would get copy and paste. With WP7, it's just a matter of time.

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Microsoft mandated compulsory hardware features, like compass and camera, but then didn't write the APIs to make them work, so none of the 3rd party apps can access them.

This is actually quite a boon. Ok, it sucks that the API's aren't there right now. But if the hardware exists on the device, it's just a matter of a software update to get it working. That means that 9 months from now, we could be seeing compass API's coming to developers. That's a lot better than not having the requirement and having to buy brand new hardware, when you're stuck on a 2 year contract.

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Not even Exchange works properly on Windows Phone 7.

Similarly to your complaint about Facebook toasts, I have no idea what you're babbling about here. This is a best-in-class exchange experience. It's got advanced Exchange features, like notifying meeting coordinators that you're going to be late to a meeting, that almost no other platform implements on a mobile device. Lack of threaded messages is sad, but I can't imagine the platform will stay without threaded messaging for too long. Leaked 6.5 ROMs have it baked into pocket outlook, and desktop outlook obviously has the algorithms for doing it. It's just a matter of having the time to implement it on WP7.

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No other company has ever produced an operating system as bad as this. It does nothing well. It is a joke.

After reading Ars and Anandtech's review sounds like they have a winner and I was expecting a complete DUD. Really I expected a POS. Now I want one esp. due to the zune integration. That being said I'm giving in to my lust for a Droid X and I hope peeps pick up WP7 and hope the platform matures. Remember above all competetion is what drives innovation. Or at least drives prices down.

But - As has been my question all along - does it deserve to succeed more than Android or iOS? They're taking the middle road approach between Apple and Google, but really I think most of their converts are going to come from RIM, Palm and Symbian,,, with the RIM converts likely being split between iOS and WP7.

It'll be interesting to see Microsoft succeed, but I don't quite know what qualifies as success. Time will tell, I suppose.

Ah, Peter, now we know the real reason you posted your "21st century guide to platform trolling" article a few days ago: so you could cite it in this article as "here is how Microsoft has been screwing up Windows, and how they've actually been fixing these mistakes when developing their new Windows Phone 7 platform." Now there's some subtle trolling. ;-)

@DeltaRanger509 - Thanks for your reply, but if you look at a Windows Phone 7 handset, you will find there are no 3rd party app notifications.

The fact that it must go via multiple external servers means that nobody will ever implement it. So the end result is no 3rd party notifications, which means you must launch the app to get updates, which defeats the whole purpose of the Windows Phone 7 appless interface.

Considering Microsoft is busy promoting "Get in, Get out, Get on with your life without having to launch an app", it is fair criticism to say that this is not happening on Windows Phone 7.

Holy crap that is a long review. I'll read it, but I think I need to clear a solid hour out of my day to do it.

I personally probably won't bite on WiMo7 no matter how good or bad it is in the nearish future. You pick an ecosystem and you start to invest time and money into it. Google has done me no wrong and frankly, I trust them for the long haul. If nothing else, when Google becomes self aware and their autonomous death cars start to purge all non-indexed entities from reality they will hopefully not delist me with whirling blades of d00m. Apple hates nerds, and I am a nerd, so screw 'em. I also like being able to change my background and stuff. I really don't need or want a phone my grandmother can use. Palm is Blackberry are a joke if you actually want apps.

MS is a little more interesting than the rest of the competition. MS is a little sleazy as a company, but, at least on desktop OSes, they have always been about as open as a closed source company can be. They don't have the anal retentive obsession with control that Apple has, but I think that they might be learning that nasty habit. MS has enough money and clout to shove themselves into the market and be a strong contender who can attract the attention of apps. MS could jump in any direction. I think I need a year or two of seeing how they handle WiMo7 before deciding if I want to invest a pile of money into them and their ecosystem. Their past is not entirely horrible, but it is spotted. More data is needed.

My contract doesn't come up for another year and a few months. I doubt MS is going to convince me to dump Android, but I'll give it a fair shake when the time comes. That said, I am pretty happy to have them in the game and actually hope they do well. A three way brawl between iOS, Android, and WiMo7 is only going to be a win for the consumers. It will push everyone to innovate faster and no matter what platform you pick, you will get the benefits of the blood letting. You can already see it in the iOS/Android fight. Android is working on its aesthetics and UI to keep up with iOS. iOS is working on features like multi tasking and the like to keep up with Android. I wouldn't be shocked to see iOS5 sporting widgets and Android 3.0 getting a major face lift. Throwing MS into the brawl is only going to help. Competition is good so long as no one wins.

Now if there was just some way to un-fuck the cell phone hardware industry and let new companies jump in without being sued into oblivion over 'patent violations'...

The interface looks pretty at first glance, with notifications, but on closer inspection you realize the notifications that it displays are a farce. The Facebook notification is pseudo. It just changes randomly. No 3rd party apps can generate notifications, because they cannot multitask.

The fact that Microsoft produced an Office app that cannot Copy-&-Paste (meaning it cannot move text) should have everyone rolling around on the floor in fits of laughter. It is a complete sham.

Microsoft mandated compulsory hardware features, like compass and camera, but then didn't write the APIs to make them work, so none of the 3rd party apps can access them.

Not even Exchange works properly on Windows Phone 7.

No other company has ever produced an operating system as bad as this. It does nothing well. It is a joke.

You've trolled every single WP7 article for months, and it's been the same tired BS. Why you haven't been banned yet is beyond me, but hopefully after this post gets reported it finally happens.

Ok, no, they're really not, even if WP7 bombs horribly (which I think it will, but for reasons pretty much unrelated to the quality of the product.) A billion dollar bomb is enough to get the CEO fired, but it's just a blip on their radar screen financially.

I just get the feeling that MS is doing mobile for all the wrong reasons and without a coherent monetization strategy. It feels like they're doing mobile because they have to get into the space so that whenever they figure out how to make money, they'll be involved.

Overall great review. Thank you for taking the time to do a thorough review. A few things that I think are worth mentioning. You refered to the kin's media management tools. Windows Live features have the media management tools you are looking for, and the Kin should have taken advantage of those tools at launch. This is why the head of the Kin project got the boot. Not only for is extreme failure, but also for not utilizing tools that live has to offer. Windows live features are exceptionally rich and more users will come to like them as they see them and use those features for their media management. In fact Windows Live Essentials 2011 was just rolled out to be ready for the launch of Windows 7 Mobile.

You also talk about the lack of data storage options for the Windows 7 phone. This has little to do with DRM rights associated with the Zune store and more to do with users pushing that data to the cloud and not storing the data on their phone. Think more along the lines of storage sizes of the iPods and iPhones 4gb, 8gb, etc. Microsoft is looking more toward the future. I hardly use jump drives or my phone for data storage anymore and push my data towards the cloud. So long as I know I will have internet access, if I'm unsure I usually will store a back-up presentation on my Windows Mobile 6.0 phone, but those files take up hardly any space on my 4gb miniSD.

Finally in regards to third-party apps like twitter and flicker, those companies I'm sure will come up with excellent applications, and work with Microsoft to incorporate those features into the Metro. However right now a lot of companies are taking a wait and see approach before they dip their toe into the Windows 7 Mobile market. If users like myself purchase and use these phones in mass then the demand will be there for these types of companies to make their apps accessible to the users. One thing that Microsoft has said from the beginning is that this phone OS will be marketing friendly and offers marketing rich features that other phones do not have.

I agree with you on the naming convention though. Something a little more clever than Windows 7 Mobile, or Windows Phone would have been good and the Zune Mobile idea would have been great.

Thank you for taking the time to research and write the article. It has only proved that I have made a smart decision in waiting for the realease of Windows 7 Phone to upgrade my 2.5 year old Windows 6 Mobile phone.

@DeltaRanger509 - If you want to know why Exchange is not properly implemented in Windows Phone 7, and why Windows Phone 7 is not suitable for enterprise use, read Paul Thrurrott's article titled "Windows Phone 7 in the Enterprise?" from this month.

OEMs can make outstanding phones if they want to. Minimum requirements don't stop them from differentiating. The hardware is free to vary, as long as the screen is the specified resolution and it has the required hardware buttons. I don't see how this is such doom and gloom for the OEMs that you think they'll run off if the phone doesn't immediately sell like hotcakes

@DeltaRanger509 - Thanks for your reply, but if you look at a Windows Phone 7 handset, you will find there are no 3rd party app notifications.

The fact that it must go via multiple external servers means that nobody will ever implement it. So the end result is no 3rd party notifications, which means you must launch the app to get updates, which defeats the whole purpose of the Windows Phone 7 appless interface.

Considering Microsoft is busy promoting "Get in, Get out, Get on with your life without having to launch an app", it is fair criticism to say that this is not happening on Windows Phone 7.

Having written 3rd party notifications into an App, I can say it is trivially easy. Having your own backend is why you'd want notifications in the first place. If you didn't have a backend server generating content while the app isn't running, there's no reason to actually use a toast notification. As for why no app has implemented it yet, I'd imagine that very few applications are fully matured, considering the RTM tools only released a month ago, which contained the final version of the notification API.

The advertising for WP7 suggests that you can get common tasks accomplished more quickly with WP7 than with other platforms. While folly lies down the path of actually trying to justify advertising with concrete facts, given that it is more an art based off of emotion than rational thought, I'll entertain your arguement. No where in the WP7 advertising does it suggest that glancable information does not include launching an app. The Marketplace restriction that an app must allow user control within 20 seconds is a perfect example of how the platform conforms to the advertising message. That requirement ensures that, even for complex games with long loading times, you can load up the app and be doing something pretty quick. That's about as much as they can do to enforce their platform vision on 3rd party developers. Secondly, 3rd party developers can always use the notification apis to push notifications to the device as well as changing the app icon to indicate that message have arrived. The tile updating alone is far more glancable information than you're going to get out of an iOS icon.

Are there legitimate criticisms of the platform? Sure. No multitasking needs to be fixed. Copy and paste should have been in there, especially with the emphasis they're putting on Office. However, saying this is the worst mobile OS ever to be launched is preposterous.

The fact that it must go via multiple external servers means that nobody will ever implement it.

Why? That's how iPhone notifications work and it's been adopted by tons and tons of apps. You don't think those apps are actually running in the background in order to send you notifications do you? No. They use Apple's Push Notification API.

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So the end result is no 3rd party notifications, which means you must launch the app to get updates,

The same is true of the iPhone. A push notification may tell you there is an update, however you need to launch the app in order to actually get it updated.

As someone who generally supports Apple (although I'm not a smartphone user and hopefully never will be) I want Microsoft to really succeed with this. The two-horse race of iOS and Android needs competition. I particularly like that Microsoft are not just following Apple's lead on user experience. It's a different way to use the phone, which presents a *real* choice to potential customers (as opposed to yet another grid of icons).

Even the anti-Microsoft trolls should get behind this. Competition is good for everyone.

@DeltaRanger509 - If you want to know why Exchange is not properly implemented in Windows Phone 7, and why Windows Phone 7 is not suitable for enterprise use, read Paul Thrurrott's article titled "Windows Phone 7 in the Enterprise?" from this month.

The article you describe is only very distantly related to Exchange and contains very little criticism of WP7. The article is more disparaging of consumer smartphone platforms (which WP7 is one of) because they lack hardcore enterprise deployment features. Esentially, they aren't blackberries or Windows Mobile phones. As the article mentions itself, the model of the business buying the phone and the worker using it for work is slowly dieing away. More and more business are letting the user bring their own phone to work. However, the article misattributes this trend to be a percieved manner for cutting costs by IT. This is untrue. Most business IT departments are moving to this model because users actually check their personal phones for work email. Many workers who are issued blackberries completely ignore the phone and use it very rarely to check email or respond to work related requests because they have poor user experiences and are mentally associated solely with working. When the user is checking their own phone, they are likely to see email when they unlock the screen on their way to go check their facebook wall or the like. This causes the user to actually read the email that they need to respond to out of work hours.

The complaint the article raises about WP7 is that it doesn't have enough EAS security features for hardcore enterprise that is still providing phones to their users. This is completely true. No true enterprise is going to buy a crop of WP7 phones for their workers, just as they aren't going to buy a fleet of iPhones or Android phones. Suggesting that they would is treating WP7 like it is still a product targeted at enterprise IT managers, when clearly Microsoft is going for the hearts & minds of the actual users.

None of this is in any way related to the actual exchange experience on the device. This is all behind the scenes to the average Joe who just wants to use his phone to check his exchange account and get his calendar synced up. This phone is great for that user. I stand by my claim that this is one of the best-in-class exchange experiences available on any mobile device.